I Flew Coach for You!
by CitronPresse
Summary: Set two years after Season 4, Mark and Addison are a couple. Four glimpses into their life together. One shot.


A/N: conceived by, written for and dedicated to EscapsimRocks.

The line "I flew coach" comes from my one shot _Love and Second Chances_ which can be found at my profile. This is a light-hearted follow-up. Starts about two years after the end of Season 4.

I hope you enjoy it! Reviews are very much appreciated.

* * *

_Running_

They've lived in New York for nearly two years now and Mark has taken up running in Central Park again. He's taken up his old life, pretty much. Except for the fact that he's older, softer hearted, sneaks in more pro bono cases and, ever since she flew from LA to Seattle to win him back, completely faithful to her. They're in love; they're happy; they are, quite profoundly and perfectly, Addison and Mark.

But now he wants her to go running with him. And Addison hates running. She's always hated running. Since the day Claudia Gold . . . Skippy's hateful, precocious and ego-crushingly athletic little sister . . . pushed her, quite deliberately into a disgusting mud puddle during compulsory girls' cross-country try-outs.

Up until now, she's managed to avoid it, but she's out of excuses. So today she's trailing dispiritedly after him, and the spring day is hotter than she anticipated and she's already sweaty and out of breath. Added to which, her beautiful new designer running shoes, with salmon pink and silver racing stripes, are pinching her feet. She hates this. Even though it's Mark and not Claudia or Miss Hardacre the evil gym teacher, she hates it with a passion.

"Come on, Add," Mark shouts, running backwards with some kind of jock's sixth sense of where other park-users are and grinning at her delightedly. He really is sweet. And suddenly, his enthusiasm infects her and she forgets about the sweat and the pinching shoes and she catches up with him and for, maybe, five minutes they run together, him maintaining an easy pace that allows her to keep up. And it's kind of fun!

"Aw, this is great, Addie," he gushes, like a bouncy puppy that's just been let off the leash. "I've wanted to do this for so long." He's so coordinated that he plants a kiss on her cheek without even breaking stride. Then he smirks. "And then, of course, there's the shower afterwards."

Oh, now this is good! She hadn't realized running came with perks. This is a huge improvement on girls' cross-country. She giggles to herself. Maybe shower sex was the reason those two butch girls that held hands under the desk liked track and field so much.

And then, whoosh! She'd been so lost in her thoughts and the unexpected rhythmical pleasure of exercising alongside Mark, she didn't see the mountain-biker, or the muddy puddle, or hear Mark warning her to watch out.

She's covered in muddy water. It's Claudia Gold all over again. All the pleasure immediately evaporates. And she stands, infuriated, in the middle of the path and glares at him. Right this minute, she's the band geek and he's the football star and she doesn't like the way that feels. She knew this was a mistake.

"I hate this!" she hisses, tears leaking from her eyes. "I hate you!"

Mark walks over and puts his arm around her shoulder, trying not to laugh. "You love me, you know you do," he cajoles her. "You must do. You flew coach for me, remember?"

She shrugs his arm off her shoulder and her glare intensifies. "Right about now, Mark Sloan, I wish with all my heart that I hadn't!" She spies a coffee vendor by the gate a few hundred yards in the distance and stomps off towards him. "But since . . . for the moment . . . I'm here, you can buy me coffee."

He stands and stares at her, open-mouthed and non-comprehending. "But we only ran for like 15 minutes," he says and she stops briefly and turns back. He looks nonplussed and ridiculously disappointed. But she doesn't care.

"Like you said," she snaps. "I flew coach for you. Live with it!"

* * *

_Dinner_

"I cooked it for you," Addison mutters stonily. "It's Seared Sea Bass and it's good."

She utters the last statement as something like a threat, implying that he'll eat it or he'll be sorry. Mark notices that she's very careful not to actually look at the sticky, blackened mess that sometime earlier that day was a fish, because that would demolish her moral high ground.

Mark considers his next move. It may still be possible to get out of eating the unappetizing offering she's put in front of him. Maybe he could distract her with sex? She's very cute when she gets mad about her cooking. She doesn't cook well and, most of the time, she doesn't give a damn. But once in a while she has a day off work and goes to the market and . . . bam, Addison Forbes Montgomery M.D. disappears and gets replaced by a ticking culinary time bomb. She scares the ever-living shit out of him when she's in this mood . . . but goddamn it, she's cute.

"Mark!" He rouses himself and he can actually hear her foot tapping, as she glowers at him over a serving platter. "Have some potatoes," she snaps.

"Add," he coaxes her. "Baby." Her eyes narrow and he's not quite sure but he thinks her throat might actually be making a faint growling noise! "Why don't I order a pizza?"

"Because we already have dinner," she menaces, adding, with a tight, drawn expression, "Seared Sea Bass." She points at his plate.

Mark knows this is dumb, but he can't resist. "Looks more like cremated than seared, Addie," he says, grinning.

The room goes very quiet and Addison gets very, very still. "I. Flew. Coach. For. You," she intones stiffly.

It's true. She did. She turned his life around, because she loves him. Eating an unpalatable dinner now and then isn't much of a price to pay for having a life instead of an existence.

He takes a huge mouthful of wine, an enormous forkful of potatoes and then the smallest piece of "fish" he can manage and chews suspiciously.

Despite the potatoes, he can still taste the charred wreckage and it's not pleasant. He swallows and takes another huge swig of wine.

"It's good," he lies.

"Thank you," she says complacently, spears a piece of fish and puts it in her mouth.

"Ughhh!" She spits it out into her napkin and her face wrinkles. "That's . . . ughhh! Ughhh! Don't eat it!" She stares at him with huge blue eyes. "You must really love me if you'd eat _that_ just because I asked you to!" she says, awe-struck.

He shrugs. He does.

"You want that pizza now?" he asks, smirking. "Or would you prefer me?"

* * *

_Head Cold_

"Hey," Mark whispers as he slips into bed beside her in the dark.

Addison's shivering. Her head aches, her throat is sore and her nose has become this crepey, inflamed, snotty cesspool beyond the help of Kleenex. She's cold and the feel of his warmth entering the bed is wonderfully comforting. But he has this routine when he comes home late from work and she's already in bed. He wakes her up with sex. And she doesn't want sex. She wants affection; and understanding; and hot lemon with his best scotch in it; she wants him to go to the all-night store and buy her ice cream. But she doesn't want sex.

"Doh," she protests stuffily, as his long, practiced fingers work their way inside her sweats . . . do the sweats not give away to him that she's not in the mood? . . . and start to stroke her, gently and teasingly. Her treacherous girl parts, clearly not in tune with the rest of her body, start to wake up and tingle at his attentions. But she really doesn't want sex and neither her girl parts nor Mark are getting any. She wants ice cream. Now.

She wriggles violently and dislodges his hand.

"Doh, Bark," she rasps. "I doad wad you. I'b sick. I wad ice creab." She folds her arms and pouts, sniffing disgustingly all the while.

Mark rolls away from her and turns on the bedside lamp.

He grimaces when he sees her irritable, germ-infested face. "Whoa! Thanks for the heads up, Addie," he says, and raises one eyebrow in humorous distaste. "Not altogether sure I want _you_ right now either." He turns off the light again and scoots back down in the bed and curls himself around her. "Let's just get some sleep," he says softly and settles down for the night.

He's lovely. He really is. But clearly he didn't hear her.

"Bud I wad ice creab," she whines. "You deed to go get sub frob the store."

He sighs. "Seriously, Addison. Get some sleep."

"Ice creab."

He sits up and turns on the lamp again and looks at her pleadingly. "I worked close to 30 hours and I'm exhausted."

She feels a little bad. Maybe she'll let him off. Maybe.

"Was it recodstructib?" she asks. "Burds, idjuries . . . real surgery?"

Mark rolls his eyes.

"Cosbetic?"

"Yeah, but—"

"Ice creab."

"Aw, come on Add." Now it's his turn to whine. "I'm all undressed. I just got into bed."

She narrows her eyes. "I flew coach for you," she says.

He sighs heavily but he gets out of bed and searches around for his jeans. "You know, one of these days you're going to bring that up one too many times," he says.

"There card be too beddy tibes," she sniffs. "I flew coach for you. If _you_ loved _b__e_ that buch, you'd _wad_ to go for ice creab.'

A half hour later, she's happily eating Ben and Jerry's and drinking hot lemon with 30-year-old Glenfiddich.

* * *

_Childbirth_

"You! You did this!" she snarls at Mark as she catches sight of him in the doorway of her hospital room

He scratches his ear and grins lopsidedly at her. "Strictly speaking," he says. "_You_ did it. You and Naomi and the catheter you cheated on me with. I just whacked off into a cup."

This isn't winning him any points. Clearly she's beyond humor. But for some reason—nerves probably; he's about to become a father and he's scared as hell—he just can't stop.

"Anyway," he says. "It's not like you didn't know what pregnancy entails."

She's quiet for a moment. Ominously quiet, obviously thinking of some retort. But it never comes, because pain contorts her face as a contraction wracks her body.

"Hand!" she demands as Mark stands there helplessly. Being a doctor isn't any use in this situation; any more than the parenting class is; he's forgotten literally everything.

"Huh?" he asks stupidly.

"Get over here and hold my hand!" she almost screeches, squeezing her eyes closed and trying to breathe correctly.

He kneels down by the bed, quite unprepared for what happens next as she crushes the life out of his hand in a death grip that seems like it won't ever let up.

"Jesus, Addie," he splutters, his eyes watering, when she finally lets go.

"Did that hurt?" she asks sweetly. The contraction has abated and sarcasm asserts itself. "Good. Because, like I said, _you_ did this. You and your overly fertile sperm." She gives him a reproachful look. "And after I flew coach for you."

Hours later, Addison is lying back smiling at him while their daughter curls her hand around his finger.

"Hey there," he says gently, entranced as the blue eyes of Miranda Calliope Montgomery-Sloan . . . poor kid, he thinks, and resolves to call her Andie . . . gaze up at him.

"You like her?" Addison asks in a soft voice.

Mark nods. He doesn't have any words. He never really expected to be here. And now here she is, his daughter. His family. His and Addison's.

"It was worth it," Addison says. "I just thought you should know that."

"What?" he asks, not understanding.

"The flying coach thing, of course," she says. "I'd do it anytime. In the back, by the toilet, stuck next to the puking kid. I'd do it anytime, if it meant I'd end up here, with you."

He's overwhelmed. "Fuck, Add," he whispers. "That's the . . . that's the—"

But she interrupts him, playfully mad. "_That's_ all you have to say for yourself? That's the best you've got after I pour my heart out to you? 'Fuck, Add?' Seriously, Mark. I flew coach for you!"


End file.
